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That was a real great watch, nice job! Got me interested throughout the whole run even though some times the times were very similar (or even worse, in MAP11's case) than human times. The third episode maps (21 and on) were just really nice.

And another quick thing, I've never dealed with TASes but how hard is it to manipulate damage on them? Because a lot of times Cacodemons (which easily die in two rockets) had to had three rockets to drop. Not that it would change time much, I'm just wondering.

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I have watched only a half for now and it's pretty fun to watch. UV-Max tases are a rarity, great that you put effort into producing one. Even though i agree with 1ntru about sloppy damage manipulation. I'll try to beat it some day though, hope you don't mind competition :)

I've never dealed with TASes but how hard is it to manipulate damage on them? Because a lot of times Cacodemons (which easily die in two rockets) had to had three rockets to drop.

It's quite easy to manipulate it for normal damage values like 2-rocket caco kills (takes few tries). Even 2-shotting arachnotrons usually takes less than 20-30 tries (i.e. just restarting from a point few secs prior to shooting. No magic or special knowledge is required. Although "-tracethingshealth" helps). 4-shotting barons is usually not time consuming either.
Of course it depends on luck too, and how hard you're pushing it. When i was recording a uv-max tas for map07, i've spent a good hour in order to kill each arach in 2 shots. 5 ssg shots + 1 rocket for 4 revs in pl01 took about the same time. And stuff which Andy Olivera does probably takes weeks worth of work.

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With a normal TAS I found cheating RNG very painful. Just repeat, repeat, repeat until you get bored or give up.

In a built speedrun, it's easier.

- decide what weapon you want to use and what you want to achieve
- easy example, a hell knight with two rockets. Chances are about 1/6,4. HK hit points = 500. Rocket damage = 148,168... 288. So you fire the first rocket on the first available tic and get 168 HP. Fail, with your second rocket you cannot kill the HK. So you fire your rocket on the next tic. You get 266. Good. Now you need >=234 on your second rocket. You wait 20 tics (minimum time between two rockets fired) and either you kill the HK or you fire on the 21st, 22nd, 23rd... tic. Even if you wait 5 extra tics, it's worth it since the other way you'd have to wait 20 tics for your third rocket.
- some encounters are not worth it. Optimum for berserk+caco is two punches, but you should try it only if you get exactly 200 HP (maximum) on your first punch easily
- the hardest part I built was two revenants with two rockets
- there is some stuff I cannot do, this is chaingun and especially plasma. You have to fire your plasma gun repeatedly or you lose too much time. I saw, however, stuff like dark2-08.lmp, in which Andy kills spectres with a chaingun in no time (as if it were an SSG!). Easy weapons include RL (unless long range since monster moves and you miss your shot :-P), berserk, SSG and BFG, though it may be hard to evaluate how much havoc you can wreck (as a maximum) with every BFG shot in a crowded area.

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Fist: Easy with trace_thingshealth. 200s are rare, which is why you don't see too many Caco/PE kills in two punches (many times I don't even bother). If you don't have the Berserk Pack, use the blood spot method below.

Pistol/Chaingun: I just use the size of the blood spots to gauge the damage, rather than use trace_thingshealth.

SG/SSG: Same as Pistol/Chaingun.

Rocket Launcher: Short range is easy, like Fist. The biggest difficulty is long range (hardest of all), thanks to the RNG being accessed both on launch and impact. So, if you launch a rocket while one or more are in the air, it affects the damage of the rockets already in flight. The hardest I've done would have to be from my first built demo: Eternal MAP04 at the seven minute mark (four rockets in flight, simultaneously).

Plasma Rifle: I only manipulate on enemies that can be killed in a few shots (no trace_thingshealth). Manipulation wouldn't be very noticable on larger monsters.

BFG: Large crowds are too complicated, so I just experiment until it looks good. Trace_thingshealth is useful for manipulating ball damage against Cyberdemons.

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I think I will be redoing this demo. I rewatched it recently and yeah the damage manipulation is pretty sloppy lol. Here's what I have for map01. I got 1:31, I was hoping for 1:29 but that seems unreachable for me...

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I think I will be redoing this demo. I rewatched it recently and yeah the damage manipulation is pretty sloppy lol. Here's what I have for map01. I got 1:31, I was hoping for 1:29 but that seems unreachable for me...

1:30 (and perhaps 1:29) is definitely possible if you use the wallrun from Looper's pl01x006. Here's a demo I modified from yours where I tried the wallrun, though I couldn't build a fast enough wallrun to get across the gap. Also, as you see from my demo, it's relatively easy to kill two mancs with five rockets using blast damage.

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my old map11 looked really sh1tty... the turning was awful and the time is worse than the DSDA record. Not exactly sure what I could have been thinking allowing such a demo to pass. Maybe this time I'll get less than 2 mins heh

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How do I use -trace_givendamage? I'm trying to rocket a baron in 4 shots and found the thing number was 26. But in game it said "damage 26 64/64" which makes no sense. How do I find the number?

You're using the wrong parameter. If you want to see the damage you are giving a monster, use -trace_thingshealth. -trace_givendamage tells you the amount of damage the monster did to you most recently and the total amount of damage the monster did to you. So, in your case, the baron did 64 damage on his last shot at you and 64 damage total.

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question for the future: is it physically possible to kill all 4 of the archviles in the exit of map11?

Should be possible with two BFG shots and enough health. In fact, I think that all you need is enough health to survive standing in the lava, since you could probably kill the archies with a BFG without getting hit by their fire.